Soapbox

“The only thing driving sales at Amazon is the number of reader reviews coupled with thenumber of stars for any given title.”

Those Amazon NumbersA longtime agentdissects the Amazonreader reviewBy Peter Rivamention and the book was likely tobe a winner. This was cheaper thanco-op advertising.

The Amazon reader reviews are
today’s equivalent of manipulating
the numbers. How is the book a
success? You would think blurbs or
actual media and viral reviews would
be the most important criteria for Amazon’s algorithm assessing positioning
and promotion. Nope, those have no
mathematical number to plug into a
formula. So is it the public reviewers’
average rating? Not alone. What Amazon
does is akin to the cheap tailor’s quip over
the cost of a suit fabric: “Never mind the
quality, feel the width!” One hundred
reviews at three stars becomes more
valuable commercially than 10 at five
stars. Crudely speaking, 300 of anything
is more valuable than 50.

Should we all be paying for reviewers?
There are services that do so for serious
fees. Google “buy Amazon reviews” and
they will turn up. If Amazon finds out
that reviews were purchased, it will sue,
but are those who purchase reviews
frauds or are they fighting an already-corrupt system?

Now, publishers know this reality. We
all know this. Every major publishing
house we deal with, every editor, asks our
authors to have all their friends and colleagues preorder their books and write
reviews immediately on pub date, and
preferably buy copies the week of release
to drive the profile. Does anyone really
believe that a branded author’s reviews,
queued up for the morning after release,
are all suddenly written by quick readers?
Oh, come on. It’s the Times 10-store whip
around in an Internet-age version. It’s
fighting fire with fire.

Publishers get blurbs from bestsellingauthors. Does thatdo it? Nope. Thenthey, along with usagents, solicit viralmedia reviews. Doesthat work? Nope.The only thing driv-ing sales at Amazonis the number ofreader reviews cou-pled with the number of stars for anygiven title. No blurb or traditional liter-ary review counts in Amazon’s positioningof any title.

However, in a somewhat misguided
way, Amazon is now making efforts to
alter the reader-review process. It has a
new algorithm that produces messages
such as this one: “Our data shows elements of your Amazon account match
elements of other Amazon accounts
reviewing the same products. In these
cases, we remove the review to maintain
trust in our customer reviews and avoid
any perception of bias.” For instance, if
you have ever, at any time, become a
friend of an author on Facebook or
Goodreads, your honest review will be
expunged. You have no recourse. “
Maintain trust”? That’s a joke. Weed out the
little guy (likely to be a genuine reviewer)
and perpetuate the status quo, more
likely.

So, here’s my challenge to Amazon:
Prove that every single review is not by an
employee, friend, associate, or colleague
of any publisher or media company. Then
it can invoke its discriminatory censorship. Until then, it is trampling on First
Amendment rights and playing into the
hands of what is, after all, a nonliterary,
mathematical rating system. ■

I’ve been an agent for 40 years. Publishers
may not like what I’m about to say, but
my observation is that most Amazon and

Barnes & Noble reader reviews are
either fraudulent or, at best, useless in
assessing the true merit of any given
title. Debut authors are largely being
shut out of a fair shake, and without
them, publishing will follow the net-work-media misstep of avoiding/shun-ning the fresh voices that attract new
audiences (which is why HBO, Netflix,
Showtime, and, yes, Amazon Prime have
surpassed the major networks in original
content).

Two decades ago, I knew editors and publishers who, determined to see their authors climb theNew York Times bestseller list, got thetacit okay from the major publishinghouses to enlist their friends and col-leagues to go to all of the 10 retail outletsthat the Times secretly used to gaugereader interest—no Nielsen numbers,just 10 stores (most of us back then knewwhich stores those were)—and buy acopy of their books. Ten friends carryingout this directive could result in a secondprinting because the book would appearat #20 or better on the Times list. Someeditors I knew had a whole campaignmapped out: five friends the first week,
10 the next, and 10 again the third. Theresult? You were bound to get a TimesPeter Riva has been a literary and licensing agentfor over 40 years, as well as a television and filmproducer.

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